Stephen Knight: Slaughterhouse

“Well, let’s not make a habit of getting into dust-ups, Colonel,” Murphy said. “Let’s just concentrate on getting back to Drum, okay?”

“That’s what we’re doing, Mike. That’s what we’re doing.”

Foster dropped down from where he had been manning the big pintle-mounted M2 .50 caliber machinegun in the Humvee’s cupola. “Hey, Murphy? When we finally halt, do me a favor?”

“You want to dance, sweetheart?”

“Huh. No, you couldn’t keep up with me, and I know you hate the way I lead. But when we do finally stop, could you dismount and jump up and down for a while?”

Murphy kept his eyes on the road. “What the fuck for?”

“I’m just hoping that your balls will eventually drop,” Foster said. “You might be full of chewing tobacco, but you’re a little light on the warrior ethic, bro.”

“Check it out, sir. Give a guy a fifty, and all of a sudden he’s a crossbreed of Rambo and Patton,” Murphy said.

Lee smiled vaguely. “Get back on your weapon, Foster.”

Foster nodded. “Hooah.”

“One bag of dicks, coming up,” Sergeant First Class Renner said.

Captain Terrence Marsh cradled his M4 carbine in his lap as the uparmored M1116 High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle—better known in the military as a Humvee—barreled down a tree-lined avenue called Hanscom Drive. The road connected the Air Force base behind them with Route 2A, and even though it was a dual-use road, it had been closed off by the military weeks ago. Just the same, it was dotted with bodies here and there, bloated corpses enveloped in black clouds of flies. Part of Hanscom Air Force Base’s housing community lay off to their left, hidden behind a fairly thin screen of trees. Marsh wished they had razed the trees, so they would have better visibility. While the Air Force had evacuated most of the families from the base, not everyone had been accounted for. Many of them had most likely become infected, and the last thing Marsh wanted was to get into a fight before they even made it to their first phase line. For that reason, he had ordered the soldier manning the Mk 19 grenade launcher in the Humvee’s cupola to maintain a refused left position and keep his weapon trained on the tree line that separated the four-lane road from the housing development.

“Make it tasty,” Marsh said as he stared out the Humvee’s bullet-resistant windows.

Downrange, two Apaches hovered over the intersection, their noses oriented to the west. Light flared beneath their stubby wings, and each aircraft ripped off four Mark 66 rockets. Equipped with fourteen-pound warheads, the seventy-millimeter rockets zipped across the sky, trailing wispy columns of black smoke. The weapons arced toward the ground and disappeared behind the trees, striking targets Marsh couldn’t see.

“Fight’s on,” Renner said in the same tone one would use to discuss the weather. He drove the last vehicle in the column of four Humvees and one M925 five-ton cargo truck carrying two squads of lightfighters.

First Lieutenant Haberman would position his element just past the mouth of Hanscom Drive and secure the Concord Turnpike’s eastern approach in a bid to deny enemy incursion from the east. Marsh’s Humvee would turn right, away from Haberman’s element, and continue on down the turnpike. Phase line alpha was the tactical designation for the traffic circle just past Concord, where a state police barracks sat across from the Massachusetts Correctional Institute. Marsh’s three Humvees and one M925 truck full of lightfighters would stop at the western side of the rotary and dismount. Using their vehicles, the soldiers would form a temporary blocking force that would effectively close off the incoming travel lanes that fed the circle. The element directly behind Marsh—also comprised of Bravo Company troops—would secure the eastern side of the rotary. This, coupled with Marsh’s blocking force, would provide the convoy with safe passage through the area and onto the westbound Union Turnpike. Bravo Company—the Bushmasters—would hold that position until the convoy’s rolling stock had passed through. Marsh would then collapse the blocking force and rejoin the formation, initially playing rear guard until the next phase line, where they would leapfrog forward through the column until they took their next position. That would be at phase line golf, a few hours away.

“Let’s hope they let us get some,” said one of the soldiers in back, an E-5 named Weir. He was a beefy kid from Minnesota, and the rest of the soldiers called him Lars the Viking because of his wide frame, pasty skin, and blond hair.

“Let’s hope they don’t,” Marsh said. “After what we went through at Cambridge, we probably want to save the beans and bullets for when we really need ’em.” The Bushmasters had spent days holed up in Harvard, and Marsh had presided over the gradual attrition of his company. After that, the company commander found he had little stomach for fighting. Hiding was even worse, since that only led to eventual discovery, but fighting was no stroll through the park, either. What Marsh wanted, what he craved right now, was movement, constant movement, the never-ending sound of the Humvee’s big, knobby tires wailing across pavement. He figured they would occupy phase line alpha for no more than ten minutes, and they were guaranteed Apache top cover. Three other units would stop with them, so they would have three fifties, two Mk 19s, and twenty-five lightfighters on station to deal with whatever the Klowns threw at them. Everyone was carrying their weapons in condition red, so if the Klowns came, there wouldn’t be any discussion.

“All right, shooters, let’s go full MOPP,” Marsh said. He pulled off his helmet and slipped on his Mission Oriented Protection Posture chemical/biological overgarment over his head, then slipped on the face mask.

The gunner in the open-air cupola was already fully manned up in MOPP IV gear, the highest level of protection against nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks available to the soldiers. Since the primary mission of the Klowns seemed to be spreading their infection, something more was needed than the slatted metal armor that afforded the gunner fair ballistic protection but did not provide much in the way of deterring biological contamination. The battalion had lost numerous troops to the “dirty bombs” used by the Infected, usually balloons filled with piss or other biologicals, and it had been decided that front-line combatants would conduct operations only under MOPP IV conditions.

Only SFC Renner remained unmasked, as he wouldn’t be exiting the vehicle unless the shit really hit the fan, and in that case his mask was close at hand. The troops had rolled down their sleeves, pulled on gloves, and ensured their ACU trousers were tightly bloused and taped inside their boots. Everyone was already sweating despite the Humvee’s air conditioned interior. The upcoming sultry summer day didn’t promise much in the way of relief. Hydration was going to become a primary concern because the CBR X CamelBak hydration systems the troops had been issued only held three liters of water, which probably wouldn’t last long in the mounting heat and humidity. Despite the protection against contamination, the MOPP IV gear paved the way for substantial tactical degradation. The bulky outfits reduced mobility, visibility, manual dexterity, and the ability to communicate, even with radios. While the gear would buy them some time against biological attacks, the soldiers of First Battalion were going to have trouble just shooting the Klowns.

The convoy reached the intersection, and Haberman’s element broke off to the left, then came to a halt in the middle of Route 2A. Renner pulled the vehicle to the right and accelerated down the highway. Marsh looked out his window. The Humvee drifted perilously close to the guardrail that separated the road from a fallow field. The railing soon ended, only to be replaced by a stone wall set eight feet from the roadway.